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YOUR LOCAL PAPER
Devastating fire burns home to the ground Local community rallies behind senior who lost everything Patricia Harcourt Editor
A senior living north of Viking just off Highway 36 has endured a devastating loss as fire claimed her house and contents and three beloved pets. Edie Hoffman lived in the threebedroom cedar house along with her grandson, Kolby Cameron, who arrived a couple of months earlier to live with her and start over in this rural community. “Three lives were lost in the fire,” he said, referring to the pain for his grandmother in not being able to get her three cats out of the house. The fire started at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21, and within 15 minutes the house was gone. “She was at home all by herself,” he said, but still managed to get her dogs, a yellow lab named Lacey and a younger black lab/Australian Shepherd cross named Stark, out of the house. After that, she stood and watched her home burn to the ground while phoning the fire department and then Kolby. “Grandma called me and said, ‘you’ve got to come home because the house is on fire,’” he said. “I was at work. I beat the fire department there by a couple of minutes. The fire department did
their best to extinguish it but we have lost the house in its entirety.” Kolby recalled having to quickly pick up Lacey and carrying the dog out of harm’s way. “She was pretty heavy,” he said, with a bit of a laugh. “It’s funny looking back at it, it could have been so much worse.” Meanwhile, the firefighters jumped into action to keep the fire from spreading further into the trees and surrounding grass. Later, black looking ditches along the highway revealed just how quickly the flames were starting to spread in the dry conditions of this spring. A cause of the fire cannot be determined as everything was burned up in the fire, said Kolby. Now his most important task is to look after his grandmother and do his best to help her recover from the loss. They are staying with Edie’s daughter and trying to keep things going despite the massive setback. “Grandma’s very overwhelmed,” he said, a feeling that can come on when dealing with even little losses like not being able to walk her dog as his leash is not there. “She’s trying to be strong,” Kolby said, but tears are also part of the scenario. “There’s been lots of that.” See FIRE P2
INGON R TI SP
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Wednesday, April 28, 2021 Vol. 44, No. 17
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